By LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Updated 10:00 pm, Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The state Supreme Court made it easier to sue your doctor on Thursday.

The state's highest court has thrown out a hurdle to the filing of medical malpractice lawsuits, finding that a state law requiring that people who want to sue produce a certificate of merit signed by a doctor violates the state constitution.

In a ruling issued Thursday, seven of the court's nine justices found that the requirement -- designed to weed out frivolous lawsuits against medical care providers -- "unduly burdens the right of access to courts" while also violating the separation of powers clause outlined in the state and federal constitutions. The remaining two justices concurred with the ruling on other grounds.

At issue in the case was a 2007 lawsuit filed in Chelan County Superior Court in which a woman sued Wenatchee Valley Medical Center claiming its employees had failed to diagnose her ovarian cancer years before.

According to the court, the woman alleged doctors at the center could have found the cancer in 2001 or 2002. Instead, the cancer went undetected until 2005; in part because of that delay, she claimed, she now has a 40 percent chance of surviving the next five years.

The trial court threw out the suit because the woman had not filed a certificate of merit -- essentially an affidavit made by a medical professional attesting to the veracity of the claim -- when she sued. The Supreme Court ruling reverses that decision and sends the case back for trial.

Writing for the majority, Justice Susan Owens noted that the Legislature in making the law violated the separation of powers by mandating court procedures to an extent that impacted the judiciary's role as a separate, equal branch of government. She also wrote that the law violates Washingtonians' rights to redress through the courts.

"Requiring plaintiffs to submit evidence supporting their claims prior to the discovery process violates the plaintiffs' right of access to courts," Owens said in the ruling. "It is the duty of the courts to administer justice by protecting the legal rights and enforcing the legal obligations of the people."

In a concurring opinion, Justice Barbara Madsen argued that, while the law does violate the separation of powers clause, the majority went to far in finding that statute placed an undue burden on filers of medical malpractice suits.

"The requirement that a certificate of merit accompany a pleading may impede a plaintiff's ability to advance to discovery but is reasonable when balanced against the efficiency interests of the courts and the interest of the legislature in creating affordable health care," Madsen wrote. "The statute serves to decrease the number of malpractice claims by requiring a plaintiff to make a preliminary showing that a medical professional believes the petitioner's claim has merit."

Madsen also argued that the majority's opinion could have far wider implications for the state courts in that it could be used to undermine nearly any Legislative mandate on the courts. The ruling, Madsen argued, could prompt "countless challenges" to procedural restrictions currently in place.